OÏDA: Sound walks through personal war experiences

On December 21st, the industrial culture platform MATTERS from Kaunas Artists' House and the Miskyi Theatre from Kyiv are releasing the album OÏDA to support Ukrainian humanitarian organizations and creators.

"When Russia started the war in Ukraine, I tried to think of what would make sense to do within the scope of the MATTERS program. If I had to simply carry out the program according to previous plans, I would have preferred not to do it at all," says the program curator Daina Pupkevičiūtė.

"During those feverish first days, when I was pondering the meaning of creating during wartime, I came across information on social media about sound walks* organized by the Miskyi Theatre in Kyiv. It seemed that the only thing I could offer to artists who remain in Kyiv was the support to create despite everything and the encouragement to create about what is happening around them."

The collaboration with Miskyi Theatre began with correspondence with the head of the Kyiv city theater, Dima Levytskyi, who then suggested three other theater collaborators – Mariia Borysova, Svitlana Dovhan, and Ihor Babaiev.

"For each walk, we also planned a soundtrack, but for Dima's text, it didn’t seem necessary at all. While listening, I rather wanted to look at the photograph he was talking about, focusing on all the details, each of which gained volume through Dima's words," explains Daina Pupkevičiūtė.

The authors of the other three walks chose their own sound creators. Kyiv sound artist Ihor Skoryna uniquely interpreted M. Ravel's "Pavane for a Dead Princess" for Mariia Borysova’s walk. Oleksii Podat and Anna Dovhan collaborated on soundscapes for Svitlana Dovhan’s walk. Ihor Babaiev invited Lithuanian sound artist Daina Dieva to create sounds for his walk through the devastated Bakhmut.

From the unconscious detachment from the war experience through ballet movements to walking the dog over soil spilled from balcony pots, from soldiers eating ice cream to the fading city rose gardens – each author of the walks included in this album shares personal war experiences.

The album will be presented in Kyiv as soon as it arrives. It will be available for a donation through the MATTERS platform on Bandcamp. All proceeds from its distribution will be donated to the Ukrainian paramedic organization Hospitallers.

The visual identity of the album was entrusted to Inga Navickaitė Drąsutė and "Hands on Press". Inga proposed a more sustainable solution by printing on cardboard and using a risograph to print posters and photos one color at a time.

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*A sound walk is an audio narrative, performed live or pre-recorded, about a specific place or places, directing the listener to follow a particular route. The narrative forms and themes can vary. Before the war, the creative team of Kyiv City Theatre conducted walks in various city districts, creating stories about abandoned gardens, post-industrial areas, and more, intertwining present and past narratives, revealing invisible layers of small histories.